


As if the World Should Roll Itself Out Like a Cloak

by earlybloomingparentheses



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: "The Adventure of the Resident Patient", Friends to Lovers, M/M, Queer revelation, Victorian sexuality, Watson's war history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 16:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11361453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlybloomingparentheses/pseuds/earlybloomingparentheses
Summary: I picked up my drink and took a small sip, allowing the smoky liquid to burn at the back of my throat before swallowing it down. Heat blossomed in my stomach, the sensation perfectly in harmony with my feelings in that moment: warm, bright, hovering indecisively between calm contentment and a headier, more restless euphoria. My eyes traveled from the day’s paper to the man who sat beside me, reading and re-reading a letter, unaware that his presence was the source of my continued and consuming joy.Watson feels deeply for Holmes, but what it is he feels is less than clear.





	As if the World Should Roll Itself Out Like a Cloak

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the dialogue at the beginning is adapted from ACD's "The Adventure of the Resident Patient."

It was early October, and outside 221B Baker Street, a storm raged. Rain lashed against the walls, great torrents of it, and the purple bruise of the sky loomed low and ominous, seeming to press insistently at the windows. Within, however, all was light and warmth. Despite the closeness of the day, a fire crackled merrily in the grate and the glow of the gaslamps lent a soft golden sheen to our surroundings. On the dark oak table between Holmes and myself rested two tumblers of honey-smooth whiskey, each half-consumed, and the soothing scent of familiar pipe-smoke filled the air.

I picked up my drink and took a small sip, allowing the smoky liquid to burn at the back of my throat before swallowing it down. Heat blossomed in my stomach, the sensation perfectly in harmony with my feelings in that moment: warm, bright, hovering indecisively between calm contentment and a headier, more restless euphoria. My eyes traveled from the day’s paper to the man who sat beside me, reading and re-reading a letter, unaware that his presence was the source of my continued and consuming joy. Holmes’s long limbs stretched languidly towards the fire, his pipe held loosely in one hand, his eyelashes lowered so deeply that he appeared well along the way to sleep; but though I had known him only for a year and a half (so brief, and yet it seemed there had never been a time when Sherlock Holmes did not exist for me), I was aware that underneath his outward languor, his brain was fast at work. Beneath that sleek black head of hair the cogs were whirring, the miraculous machinery of his mind spinning at a pace no ordinary man could perceive. It was my great honor and privilege, I thought as I took another slow sip of whiskey, the corner of my mouth tugging upwards in an involuntary ghost of a smile, that I was allowed even to recognize when such fantastic feats were at work.

I sat back and savoured the sound of the rain fighting to get in, savoured the feeling of the storm outside and the safe haven of Baker Street, for it had not been so long since my time in Afghanistan that safety and comfort had entirely lost the shining unreal quality of the miraculous. My thoughts drifted towards hot sand and blistering sun, the acrid smell of gunpowder and the terror of sudden noises; the wordless, powerful bond of mutual trust and need that sustained me and my comrades as we faced death together daily; and the broad browned face of one man in particular, a favorite amongst us all, whose daring and humor alike had brought fire to our weary hearts on too many occasions to count. He had been blasted with shrapnel two months before my own injury and I had been forced to amputate his left leg, his blood pouring into my hands as I cauterized the wound with insufficient equipment and under cover of darkness. He died of an infection and subsequent fever in an army hospital some three weeks later. It had not been my fault, I knew that then and now, but he was not a man I had wished to fail. Curse that blasted war, I thought.

“You are right, Watson.” Holmes’ low voice cut in, smooth and uncommonly gentle, startling me out of my reverie. “It does seem a very preposterous way of settling a dispute.”

“Most preposterous,” I agreed fervently, and then realizing that I had not spoken for some three-quarters of an hour, sat up straight and stared at him in amazement. “Holmes, what on earth—?”

He smiled, with that familiar twinkle in his eye that meant he knew he was about to astound his audience with some feat of deduction. Even in my amazement I enjoyed the pleasure he took in my reaction.

“You remember,” said he, “that some little time ago, when I read you the passage in one of Poe’s sketches, in which a close reasoner follows the unspoken thoughts of his companion, you were inclined to treat the matter as a mere tour de force of the author. On my remarking that I was constantly in the habit of doing the same thing you expressed incredulity.”

A faint flush rose to my cheeks. I remembered the discussion, but had believed I had assiduously concealed my fond thought that Holmes was boasting just a bit. “Oh, no!”

“Perhaps not with your tongue, my dear Watson, but certainly with your eyebrows.” Holmes raised his own eyebrows, clearly amused rather than offended. “So when I saw you throw down your paper and enter upon a train of thought, I was very happy to have the opportunity of reading it off, and eventually of breaking into it, as a proof that I had been in rapport with you.”

This new feat dazzled me. I freely admit to being perpetually dazzled by my friend and flatmate, but this was beyond anything I had yet witnessed. “But I have been seated quietly in my chair. What clues to my thoughts can I have given you?”

“You do yourself an injustice. The features are given to man as the means by which he shall express his emotions, and yours are faithful servants.”

I swallowed, an uncommon fluttering sensation warming my chest. “Do you mean to say that you read my train of thoughts from my features?”

“Your features, and especially your eyes.”

He was alight with his own cleverness, as I loved to see him, and the thought that he considered me a worthwhile study—that I had somehow put that expression on his face—was nearly too good to be true.

I have found myself a number of times in my life in the company of greater men than I—men whom I admired with inarticulate intensity, whose notice and good opinion I craved like a schoolboy seeks praise—and Holmes was the greatest of them all. I felt a keen desire to please him, to make what feeble attempts I could at learning his methods of deduction, and a word of commendation from him was as precious to me as a rare treasure. For it was with him as it had been with his predecessors: I wished his singular notice even as I knew I was unworthy of it, and was content to cherish whatever morsels of attention he was kind enough to give me. That he had allowed my participation in the adventures of _A Study in Scarlet_ had been beyond my wildest imaginings, his confidence in me at once incredible and frighteningly fragile, and as he included me more and more in his cases I wished ever more fervently that he would continue to do so. Brilliant as he was, and preoccupied with such important matters, I knew he had little time to spare for a wounded ex-army doctor, and I memorized him knowing full well that he would never think to take such care with me. But the revelation that he had been observing my features so closely as to read my thoughts was marvelous and something else—was I frightened? Why on earth would I be frightened?

“Perhaps you cannot yourself recall how your reverie commenced?”

“Hm?” I blinked, and the sharp nose and pale eyes came once more into view. “Ah. No, I am afraid not.”

A satisfied noise, somewhere between a hum and a grunt, sounded within his pale throat. “Then I will tell you.” He pointed a long finger to the paper, abandoned (I remembered not when) at my feet. “You threw your paper down, which is what drew my attention to you in the first place. Then you stared ahead with a vacant expression, after a moment tugging at your collar as if feeling the air suddenly too close. I knew you were imagining yourself somewhere warm. Your eyes flashed with fear, yet there had been no external stimulus. I guessed you were remembering Afghanistan even before your hand stole to your old wound. When it did, your face grew urgent, and your fingers began to move as if longing for some tool—a surgical instrument, undoubtedly. And then a swift exhalation of breath, your hand stilled, and your eyes…” For the first time, he hesitated. “Your eyes looked unutterably sad.”

I stared at him, my heart in my mouth, feeling stripped bare in a way that was raw and yet not entirely unwelcome. He held my gaze steadily, and his voice was soft when he continued.

“You were thinking of some fallen comrade. Some fellow soldier you could not save.”

I nodded, swallowing back a sudden surge of grief. I wanted Holmes to look away and to keep looking at once—for him to see the darkest recesses of my soul, but also for him to let them be for fear that their brokenness would send him flying in the other direction.

“And then you shook your head, a wry smile twisting your lips, and I knew you were thinking of what a terrible waste it is to settle international disputes in such a way.” He spoke these last words almost absently, and I saw his hand move abortively towards me and then settle on his own knee. “My dear fellow, I am certain it was not your fault he could not be saved.”

“It was not,” I said quietly. “But I shall never forgive myself nonetheless.”

We sat in silence for a long moment. Holmes shifted in his seat. “Was he—was he a particular friend of yours, this soldier?”

He stared into the fire as he said it, perhaps to give me some semblance of privacy or the opportunity to refuse a confidence if I so chose. I hesitated, wondering what to say, how to put into words my relations with James Abernathy. For they had been scant, really, when all was said and done. Abernathy had inspired that particular admiration and desire to please that I had felt for a handful of men before him—a brilliant schoolmaster from my adolescence, a fellow student at medical school whose skills far surpassed my own, a number of somewhat lesser lights amongst schoolfriends and acquaintances—and I had sought conversation with him at times and avoided it at others, wishing for his attention but knowing myself unworthy of it. My esteem of him far surpassed his notice of me, so it was perhaps not entirely accurate to call him a “particular friend.” Besides, to try and explain my feelings toward him was treading far to close to my feelings for Holmes, so at length I shook my head.

“No. But he was universally admired amongst the men. He knew how to make us laugh when we needed it, and his courage was unmatched. He saved an Afghan girl once, from a building explosion we ourselves had caused. His father was a sheep farmer and he had a sweetheart named Eleanor who put dried heather in his letters to remind him of home. He was the worst poker player I have ever known.” The memories tumbled out of my mouth as I pictured his sun-browned face and strong hands, remembering the scar above his right temple and the mole on his wrist. “He was the kind of man I would like to be.”

Holmes moved slightly, his long legs shifting restlessly as he put his fingertips to his mouth. “I am sorry, my dear fellow,” he said. “I did not intend to dredge up painful memories.”

_My dear fellow_ warmed me as no other words could, and I smiled, feeling the knot of grief in my chest loosen at the knowledge that Holmes did value me in his own small way. “Not at all, Holmes. I was remembering already when you broke in on my thoughts.”

His thin lips grew thinner and he picked up his whiskey, draining it in one swallow. “It seems the rain has let up, and the evening has brought a breeze with it. What do you say to a ramble through London?”

He was quite right, though I had not noticed the change in the weather, wrapped up as I had been in my thoughts. Gladly, I acquiesced, and we headed out into the cool evening air. For three hours we walked, and the whole time Holmes kept up a running commentary of deductions and inferences about the people we passed. I was alternately amazed and amused at the wealth of information he pulled from fur hats and trouser cuffs, dirty fingers and cigarettes. As the evening darkened into night Holmes seemed to glow steadily brighter, effervescent with his own brilliance and happy, I think, for an audience with which to share it.

We turned back to Baker Street and found a brougham waiting, and a doctor with a mysterious benefactor and a troubling question, and the case that followed was full of thrilling details—a feigned illness, foreign strangers, a hanged man—and culminated in the revelation that the criminals were a notorious gang of bank robbers. All in all, it was the kind of adventure my friend enjoys immensely, and I loved to see him in his element, glittering like a sun amongst much smaller stars.

 

 

The police-inspector on the case was one Lanner, whom Holmes had worked with once or twice since I had met him; he was not the most promising on the force but he welcomed my friend’s help with such heartiness that I liked him all the same. We were tidying up some loose ends at the conclusion of the mystery—Holmes was making some further calculations regarding rope—when the amiable officer grinned at me, shaking his head.

“It does me good to see him like this. I don’t know what you’ve done, Dr. Watson, but I can assure you, Scotland Yard is grateful to you all the same.”

Startled, I asked what on earth he was on about.

“Well.” He leaned in confidentially. “Those black moods of his. You know what I mean, I’m sure, and we all know about them on the force too. He takes care to hide them from us, but Gregory Lestrade has stumbled upon him once or twice when he was in that state, lying on his sofa practically dead to the world. It’s an open secret amongst us that Mr. Holmes finds his own mind a dark place sometimes, and it’s generally agreed upon that you’ve made it better somehow. So we’re all grateful, for his sake as well as ours.”

I gaped at him open-mouthed. Of course I knew the moods he was talking about—they had struck three times since I had known him, always in long stretches between cases, and they were frankly terrifying. But nothing I could do seemed to help, no conversation or walks or offers of concerts and dinner, and I felt guilty and dejected that I could not assist the man I admired above all others. Surely Lanner was mistaken?

“He shows off for you,” the police-inspector added mischievously. “Struts about like a peacock now, making deductions. Mr. Holmes is a very dignified man, Dr. Watson, very aloof, and I must say it does me good to watch him behave like an eager schoolboy once in awhile.”

Holmes came back over to us, then, eyes sparkling, and rattled off a series of deductions regarding rope thickness and friction and the physics of hanging things in the air, and Lanner gave me a meaningful look as if to say, _See there?_

I stared at Holmes’ vibrant face and thought that if what Lanner said was true—if I made him better, and if he spent his time trying to _impress_ me—it was, quite simply, earth-shattering.

We took a cab home to Baker Street. I sat in silence most of the way, unable to respond to Holmes’s attempts at conversation, dumbfounded as I was. Instead I stared out the window, marveling at the thought that Holmes might think of me in anything like the same way I thought of him. It seemed presumptuous to even consider the possibility. And yet it was obviously true that I knew nothing of his behavior prior to our meeting; if all of Scotland Yard agreed that I had made some difference in the great man’s life…The thought sent tremors through my body. I risked a surreptitious glance at Holmes; he was studying me closely, an expression of concern creasing his pale brow. I gave him a quick smile and looked away again. My heart was beating rapidly. I tried to articulate to myself what was happening to me, why I felt as though my life were at a tipping point, as though something huge and terrible loomed ahead.

_No one has ever reciprocated_ , I thought. _No one I have felt this way about has ever reciprocated. And if he truly does…_

If he truly did, then what, exactly? Some of my strange euphoria drained away as I failed to imagine any concrete outcome to this revelation. It felt as though something should happen, as if the world should roll itself out like a cloak and everything right itself again in new patterns and shapes…

A touch on my elbow roused me. The cab had stopped; we were outside Baker Street; and Holmes was looking at me with a most peculiar expression on his face. We mounted our seventeen steps in silence, but before I could turn to my chambers, Holmes cleared his throat.

“My dear fellow,” he began, and I looked at him, suddenly terrified he could see inside my mind, “I am very sorry if this case has caused you any distress.”

I looked at him blankly, uncomprehending.

“I know you have seen far worse things in your time, but a hanged man is never a pleasant sight.” He hesitated. “And I know well how badly the violence and ruthlessness of our fellow men can try a man’s soul. It does all seem quite pointless, at times. I am sorry to have exposed you to the darker side of human nature. It was never my intention to upset you.”

I was quite floored by this extraordinary little speech. He had entirely misinterpreted my silence, of course, but was rare that Holmes spoke so frankly of how his work affected him. Perhaps it was this that gave me the presence of mind to respond.

“Do not trouble yourself, Holmes. As you say, I have seen worse. Although it is one thing to witness the violence of war, and another to see violence back home.” I shrugged a shoulder, playing with the blanket that lay rumpled atop the back of the sofa. “I must admit I do not understand it.”

Holmes sank into his armchair. “Greed does terrible things to men. So does passion.” He studied his hand, his long slender fingers, not meeting my eyes. “Jealousy, hatred, love above all are opposed to reason. That business with the ears, last year. Jim Browner began a good man, a good husband, devoted to his wife. It was his rage and his jealousy that pushed him to such grotesquerie.”

I remembered the case well; Browner’s sister-in-law had developed such a passion for him that she alienated his wife from his affections, and Browner had gone mad with anger and murdered the sister-in-law and her lover, cutting off their ears and sending them to his wife as a twisted form of revenge. The whole affair had seemed impossible and strange to me, inhuman and incomprehensible, and it had upset Holmes greatly, plunging him into the first of his black moods that I had witnessed. Now, sprawled in his armchair, he seemed more abstracted than disturbed, but the memory of his descent into darkness banished my intentions to escape to my bedroom.

“It was a terrible thing, and a baffling one, to me at any rate,” I said, taking my own seat and trying to make eye contact with my friend. His gaze remained steadily fixed on his knees. “I cannot imagine feeling so strongly about something that it would make me commit such crimes as those we have witnessed.” I picked up my tobacco case, thinking perhaps a pipe would ease my nerves. “I suppose I am fortunate that I have never been tempted.”

“There is no one?” Holmes asked softly, his voice so low I could hardly hear it. “No one who could drive you to break the law? No one who could tempt you away from your staid, gentlemanly decency and your steady upright temperament?”

When he said it that way, it sounded almost sad. But I did not miss the things I had never had, I reflected, and I was content with who I was.

I shook my head. “Perhaps someday there will be. I suppose if I ever marry, I shall feel that way about my wife. But no woman has ever provoked such sentiment in me thus far. I do not know. Perhaps I am not built that way.”

Holmes said nothing for a long moment. When he spoke again, it was as if his voice came from deep within him, distant and low. “What about your soldier? The man you could not save.”

James Abernathy’s face blossomed before my eyes, browned and smiling, prematurely lined with both laughter and sorrow. I thought of his blood on my hands and my heart clenched. Hazily, my mind felt out the idea that Holmes had suggested to it; the notion made its sluggish way through my brain, oddly heavy, thick like molasses, and I didn’t know what it would mean if he were right. It would mean something, I thought.

“Perhaps,” I admitted. I drew my hands into my lap, where my tobacco case lay forgotten. “But it is a strange thing, the way you feel about the men with whom you fight. They are like—like brothers. Almost like brothers.”

“Almost,” Holmes echoed, not to me. Then he seemed to awaken, and he looked straight at me, his sharp eyes penetrating through the mist in my brain. I felt suddenly, terribly exposed.

“Would you commit a crime for me?” he asked, his gaze still riveted to mine.

The answer came so easily, without thought or struggle. “Yes,” I said simply.

We looked at each other.

“I feel the same about you,” he said.

And then it came crashing in: a great swell of understanding, like the sea, ruthless, all-encompassing: why I craved his approval, and what it meant for him to crave mine, and the truth behind my string of attachments to men like James Abernathy, and why I had never loved a woman, and whom it was I did love, and exactly what crime Holmes was asking me to commit. I held his gaze for mere seconds and in those seconds my world turned over, like somebody had shaken it, all the bits and pieces of my incomplete life shifting and rattling until they settled into place. And for the first time in my life, it all made sense. For the first time in my life, I _fit._

“Oh, dear God,” I whispered, bringing my hands to my face.

“Did you not know?” Holmes asked softly.

I shook my head, mute, in a daze. My blood was roaring in my ears.

“My dear fellow,” he began, but I put up a hand to stop him.

I have always believed myself a fundamentally good man. I was not inclined toward troublemaking as a youth; I did not break rules for the sake of it, like some of my peers, and I as I had said to Holmes, I had no one for whom to break them. In medical school, I was simply uninterested in the more dubious pursuits of my fellows—illicit pictures, secret trips to rough pubs, the occasional brothel visit. I had thought of inversion—or homosexuality, as some were beginning to call it—only in vaguely clinical ways, assuming it a sort of depravity or illness. It would never have crossed my mind to associate myself with it, since I was neither depraved nor ill. I had admired (worshipped, perhaps, even loved, though I did not know it then) a string of men like Abernathy with what I believed to be pure and brotherly affection. It was true that my feelings for these men had carried an inexplicable intensity and I had instinctively kept them to myself. But I had never dreamt they could be wrong; I had never dreamt that _I_ could be wrong.

And that was the crux of it, in that moment, as I sat there in Baker Street that afternoon: either I did not know myself in the least, and I was not a good man after all, or the world had made a grave error when it decided what it meant to be good. It was true, I now saw, that there had been no virtue in my disinterest in brothels and pornography. It was true that to some extent I had _not_ known myself—not until this very minute.

And yet.

I turned back to Holmes. I turned to him as I have turned to him so many times, before and since, for answers, for the truth beneath the most impossible puzzles and the solutions to the most trying problems. And though he said nothing, I found my answer in his steadfast gaze.

“My god,” I whispered.

“Well?” His voice was quiet. He watched me calmly, waiting, but I could see in his eyes something else—a quiver. A question.

“Do you—” I swallowed, all of a sudden unaccountably nervous. “Did you really mean—that you…that you feel the same?”

“John Watson,” he breathed, and in a moment was standing before my chair, hands on mine, raising me to my feet. “John.”

He put his hand on my cheek. His long thin fingers caressed my skin, more gently than I would have thought possible, and, _oh_. This was not bad. It could not be bad.

“Holmes,” I whispered, my lips inches from his. Then, trying out the word as if for the first time: “Sherlock.”

He laughed, an odd, soft, bell-like sound. “Holmes, I think. My parents had strange tastes.”

“Holmes,” I agreed. “My Holmes.”

“Yours,” he said. “I am ‘my dear Holmes’ in your stories already, after all.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Will you kiss me now?”

He didn’t answer—not with words, at any rate. His lips were dry, cracked; a revelation.

“My god,” I said again, when we broke away.

“You really did not know…?” he murmured, his long nose brushing mine.

“I am, as you like to remind me,” I said, leaning my forehead against his, “a much denser man than you.”

“No.” Holmes kissed me again, longer this time, and his hands came up to rest on my waist. “No, I don’t think you are.”

“You read my mind the other day,” I pointed out with a smile, and ran my fingers through his short dark hair. “Reached into my thoughts and pulled them out into the sunlight.”

“I don’t think you’ll find,” Holmes murmured, slipping his hands over my chest and stroking gently, “that you’ll have much difficulty doing the same to me, in this particular moment.”

For a second this gave me pause: his hand low on my belly, the growing warmth of my blood. “Holmes, you know I’ve only just realized—only just understood—”

He pulled away, surveying me, for the first time, with hesitation and concern.

“I’m sorry, John.” His fingers moved slightly at his sides. “I did not intend to lead you in a direction you were not ready to go.”

But that was not right, either. “No,” I said, pulling him back in. “No. I have been following you for more than a year now. I will follow you anywhere. I would follow you into hell.”

“I hope you don’t believe that is where this will take you,” he said softly.

I looked at his eyes: grey, clear, bright. True. “No.” I kissed him. “No, I think we’re going somewhere much sweeter than that.”

“I rather suspect,” Holmes replied, almost shyly, “that we’re already there.”


End file.
